


we tried the world and it wasn't for us;

by explosivesky



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28774800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosivesky/pseuds/explosivesky
Summary: She studies him, a gentle smile on her face. Her eyes are warm and he decides he no longer believes in science, or logic; there’s a light that comes from within her, like she has a sun for a heart; she wisps around, glittering, and her shadows are moonbeams. She drips dark matter and stardust.“If I were human,” he says, “the likelihood that I would exist at the same time as you is slim - unaccountably, unbearably slim - that it’s a risk I could never imagine taking.”
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Kudos: 6





	we tried the world and it wasn't for us;

He can’t pinpoint exactly where in time Clara Oswald became his entire life.

 _Literally_ , he means, _literally_ in time - he’s not sure of the day, the year, the era; was it even on Earth? Deep space? Black holes, supernovas; on a sun, preparing to be born? Was she there or was she gone? Did he blink and miss her? Possibly - most likely - because Clara’s always been there, under every breath of the universe, hovering, fluttering around the edges, saving him. 

There’s a bump on his shoulder; her forehead rests against the material of his coat. “I know that look,” is all she says. Her voice is low but not delicate. She is not as soft as she once was. 

He stares down, cataloguing the details: her hair tucked behind her ears, how the dryness of her lips causes her tongue to dart out every few seconds, the way the length of her eyelashes flicker like stars, her eyes blinking in and out of existence. What does she see when she’s in the dark? He wonders.

He asks, “Do you? Does it have a name?” 

She furrows her eyebrows, mimicking him. “Thinking.”

“I’m always thinking.”

“It’s particular.”

She has him pegged. Her fingers spread over the TARDIS interface, palm brushing the tip of a lever. It’s like a caress. She loves her life now. This hasn’t always been the case.

“You,” he confesses honestly. “I’m thinking about you.”

The corner of her lip pulls up, a marionette on a wire. She lifts her head. The pressure on his arm is gone. She says, “You’re always thinking about me.” She tells it to him as if it’s a mildly interesting fact. 

He merely hums. She’s not wrong. She seems surprised at his lack of response and she nudges him with her elbow. 

He shrugs, glancing at her again. “Well, it’s true.”

The glint dies in her eye; she’d only been prodding fun at him. He’s lied enough. She’s nothing to joke about. She says, “I can get used to this _charm_.”

He flips a switch. The TARDIS shudders to a halt. “I’m not charming you.”

“Hm.” She gives him a wary look. Her mouth is still at a playful slant. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m trying to be more honest,” he replies. He takes a step back. “I can show you what I was thinking, if you’d like.”

She appears momentarily alarmed. “Is this going to be some weird, psychic link-thing?”

He laughs once, under his breath. He reaches for her hand, his fingers covering hers. She responds to the action warmly, automatically moving closer to him; the center of gravity is the space between their bodies. He can feel her blood in her veins, her heart pumping, keeping her alive. He tugs her towards the door.

It opens to a vast blackness and a sprawling galaxy below them; Clara’s other hand grips the front of his coat, fingers curling around the fabric. She leans over the edge, staring in wonderment at worlds teeming with life, vibrant color, unimaginable collections of atoms.

“Wow,” she says, breathless. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, from afar.” He agrees.

She gives him a slight eye-roll; his cynicism can be so trying. “Some things are still beautiful up-close, you know.”

He turns his head. His eyes meet hers and the light reflected in them keeps his words stuck in his throat. He understands the most advanced algorithms and theories, numerical codes and puzzles; ancient, universal secrets. He isn’t an idiot, probably. He knows why she leaves him speechless.

“Actually,” he says quietly, “I do know that.”

A sigh escapes her lips; her smile is brighter than any star. She shifts her body inward, hiding her face against his chest, her chin dropping. 

“I get it,” she tells the infinite abyss below her. “I can take a hint.”

“Get what?”

“This.” She gestures dramatically in front of her. “ _Love._ ”

He smiles. 

“Funny,” he says. “That’s one I’m still working on.”

“Well,” she replies, her palms covering his hearts, “you’ve got quite the steep learning curve.” 

\--

He sits in her classroom alone, waiting for her. His hands are in his pockets, his feet kicked out in front of him casually, ankles crossed. He watches the morning sky transition and evolve outside the window. Before her, he never understood the importance of passing moments; the leaves sifting through the breeze, casting shadows in patterns across the floor; clouds drifting lazily by, untouchable. She’s about to walk through the door; she’ll say his name exasperatedly, but endearingly; she’ll look like her bones are threaded through with rings of stars, and his tongue will be heavy, too heavy in his mouth. He won’t know how to tell her anything. He’ll say, _Hi._ He’ll want to say, _I’ve been missing you as long as I’ve been alive._

 _That’s a long time,_ she’ll answer, her cheeks pink and her smile wide. 

He’ll reply-- 

The door creaks open; he doesn’t have to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes. “Bright and early, as always,” she says, dropping her bag on her desk. “You’d be my best pupil if that’s what you were.”

So he says, “Hi.”

She throws him a grin. “Hello, Doctor.”

He’s predicted the scenario perfectly, but his poetry, his imagery, the vision of her walking towards him, the stars and suns and planets aligning - the hues and intertwining shapes of solar systems - don’t do her justice.

And now that she’s standing in front of him, he can’t not say it. “I’ve been missing you as long as I’ve been alive.”

She pauses for the briefest of moments and then says, “That’s a long time.”

He replies, “Being with you now, it feels like no time at all.”

He hasn’t counted on her next reaction. She throws her head back and laughs, leaning against the desk he’s sitting at. He drags his hands out of his pockets, shifting his weight onto his elbows, closer to her. 

She studies him, a gentle smile on her face. Her eyes are warm and he decides he no longer believes in science, or logic; there’s a light that comes from within her, like she has a sun for a heart; she wisps around, glittering, and her shadows are moonbeams. She drips dark matter and stardust. 

She says, “I must’ve been wrong.”

“About?”

She takes one of his hands in both of hers. “It’s not love.”

That’s news to him; but then again, human emotions are fickle, and his are prophecies, tombstones, hand-chiseled epitaphs he carries until he dies, reincarnates. 

But Clara--

He doesn’t think he’ll ever let go of her. He doesn’t think he ever could. 

He’s had one heart touched before, but never two. He’s never been carved into the way he’s carved into others. Her skin is sharp; her mouth is a knife, digging. 

“You know that silly tradition of - engraving initials into wood? Tree bark, benches.”

“Vandalism.”

He almost laughs. “Yes.”

“Sure.” Her eyebrows are perplexed, expression amused.

He lifts his shoulders and drops them slightly. “I’m the tree. Or the bench. Whichever you find more aesthetically pleasing.”

“And I’m, what?” She reaches for him, slipping her fingers underneath his collar and straightening it. “Vandalising you?”

“Permanence.” Her hand drops to his chest, between his hearts. “I’ve never had anything permanent before.”

She knows he doesn’t actually mean her, as a person. He means the idea, the emotion, the memory. She wants to give him more. Something he can remember from up-close rather than from afar; a sensory experience, a connecting minute. 

Her fingertips slide underneath his jaw, tilting his head, and she waits. His face doesn’t change, but his eyes do. She leans down and presses her lips against his, carefully, tenderly. He sits still, unmoving, like if he shifts an inch he’ll ruin the moment; he’s burning every detail into his brain, creating an indestructible pathway of neurons, firing rapidly. His hearts beat loudly, each pulse the pounding of wings. 

She pulls away, and the look on her face is indescribably lovely, heavenly. He knows - better than anyone - that time goes on, goes back, goes left and right, but it doesn’t freeze. 

He guesses that maybe, just now, their kiss is the closest anyone - Time Lord or not - has ever come to stopping time.

“Not love, huh?” He asks, thinking dangerous thoughts like _forever_ and _stay._ “Is there another word?”

“I’m an English teacher,” she says, lowering her eyes and smiling. “Oh, I could tell you millions.”

\--

She still craves the adventure and action, but they often find themselves idle, lacking momentum. She likes to explore the library. He has first editions of every Earthly classic, and the TARDIS translates all the books from other worlds she’s never heard of, and she learns; some of them aren’t even written on paper, or bound in leather, or any normal substance - he explains, in low, soothing tones, about other alloys and fabrics and smooth, pressed materials used for books across the universe. Sometimes, she likes listening to that over reading them. 

“Read to me,” she requests. She does this every once in awhile. He always obliges.

“Subject?”

She rests her head against the back of the couch, gaze traveling up the shelves. “Philosophy.”

“ _A Brief History of Time._ ”

She giggles, her eyelids falling closed. “That’s scientific theory.”

“I’m a Time Lord. It’s philosophy.”

She laughs again, louder. It’s the most welcome sound. He wants it on a loop for the rest of his life. She says, “Something I’m unfamiliar with, please.”

He wanders towards the back, pulling out a small, heavy volume that can’t be more than a hundred pages. He walks back over to where she’s stretched out, lifting up her legs and sitting, adjusting them across his lap instead. She merely observes, not bothering to help, enjoying the space they’re sharing. 

“It’s a collection of essays,” he explains. “The topics of philosophy are universal - some more advanced than others - but sentient creatures seem to wonder about similar things.”

“Such as?”

“Well,” he says, “love.”

She makes a humming noise in her throat. “Tell me.”

He flips through the pages. 

“Love is not a physical event, nor an emotional one,” he reads. “It is a cosmic shift; a cellular recognition of corresponding energies on subatomic levels. It is reincarnation described with logic, sense, and science. It is impossibility verified by existence. Here, there is a beckoning, a calling, for the vibrance and life of another; like a soul reaching out, tethering to theirs. It is not a desire to touch one’s skin, but to live within it. Love says, ‘I wish to be your heart,’ rather than, ‘I wish to own your heart.’” 

He stops speaking. She says, “Have you ever felt that?”

His first instinct is _Yes, of course, I’ve lived a long life._ But it’s not true. He has cared deeply, certainly, for the people that seem to blink in and out of his life faster than he can count - humans, so fragile, fleeting - but love, by these terms? It would be a lie.

“Once,” he chooses to reply. “I told you I was trying to be more honest.”

She looks at him, smiling. She gets the implication. “See?” She says. “One word isn’t enough. I need complete sentences.”

“You would say that,” he answers mildly. “You’re an English teacher.”

She laughs and laughs and laughs, and the moment is not lost to time.

\--

She almost dies. It’s nothing new. But the fear begins to devour him; it’s a monster filling his ribcage, sinking his stomach; his veins are bursting, shattering.

She stays on the TARDIS for a few days because he feels like he might die, too. He can’t describe why, or how, but she doesn’t question him.

He’s leaning against the platform railing, holding her, his chin resting on the top of her head. She breathes steadily against his chest. He counts every inhale and exhale, calculating oxygen intake. 

She says, “You’re thinking.”

“Yes.”

“About me.”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

She tilts her jaw up, catching his eye. She asks, “What is it?”

His hand strokes through her hair. “I’m afraid.” He’s startled by the own bluntness of his answer.

Her fingers wrap around the fabric of his coat, her arms around his waist. “I’m fine.”

“I know. But you could’ve not been.”

She can’t argue with that. She drops her stare again. She says, “What would you have done? If I wasn’t.”

The idea feels like a hard lump underneath his skull, like an arrow puncturing his brain. There’s something blocking the words in his throat. He might be choking, he isn’t sure. He can’t react. 

She feels the tension in his body, like he’s already waging a war. His eyes look glassy and far-off, but she shifts in his embrace and it grounds him again.

He says achingly, “I would rip apart this universe looking for you.” He leans in to kiss her once, because the pain is unbearable, and he needs to be certain that she is here, and real; she can feel his hearts thumping in a strange rhythm, out of order and frantic. Her hand curves around his neck and he shudders. “I would burn it all down trying to bring you back to me.”

It sounds drastic, and tragic, and horrifying, but he knows what he’s capable of and he knows what would trigger it. He couldn’t go on living if she weren’t. He doesn’t know how to survive anymore without her, and it has nothing to do with regeneration.

She takes his hand and gingerly presses it against her collarbone, the cradle of his palm causing the beat to feel like an echo. 

He meets her eyes and understands.

“I wish to be your heart,” he quotes, but continues in his own words. “Then if you died, I would die, too.”

She cocks her head to the side. It’s a teaching moment. “Do you think it would be nice?” She asks. “To die?”

“Sometimes,” he answers truthfully. “Sometimes I wonder why I don’t, but then I see the beauty of the universe.” He brushes her hair away from her cheek. “That beauty would be gone.”

She nods. He’s seen too many things for her to tell him he’s wrong. She stands on her toes, fingertips digging into his shoulders. Her lips ghost his.

“Don’t rip apart the universe,” she says.

“Well,” he says, “don’t die.”

She calls it an impasse.

\--

(One day, he will. An expanse of smoke and ash and fire will stretch around him, in front of him, through every inch of time and space. He will see her eyes in the flames, her smile in the explosions, her laughter in the disappearances. And maybe, finally, he too will be gone.)

\--

“Are you ever tired of this life?” He asks one lazy evening at the end of her school day, after sitting patiently through all of her classes, studying, learning from her. “The repetitiveness, the sluggishness…”

Clara erases the whiteboard thoroughly. “Linear time can be tedious.” 

“So?”

“On occasion,” she says, dropping the cloth on the shelf. “I have bad days.”

“I’m sensing a continuation.” He taps a foot against the desk chair. 

She turns, her palms flat on the table top. He makes note of the _World’s Weirdest Teacher_ mug someone must’ve gotten her as a joke. She says, “Peace is not worthless.” Her eyes fall to the window. He follows her gaze and senses that stillness again; that calm before calamity, those magic hours. The sky is a fading grey-pink; it had been a fall day. “I think there’s a lot to be valued in moments where - nothing is happening. Where I can pretend that the lights passing by, the rain falling on the glass, the wind through the trees, is all on repeat - an unending, unchanging cycle.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “I see the appeal,” he allows, thinking back to that morning weeks ago, sitting where he is now. “It’s foolish - because I’m well aware that everything changes in one tiny, split millisecond to the next - but the logic doesn’t stop the sentimentality.” He places his feet flat on the floor. 

Clara smiles, and doesn’t say anything more. Her stare focuses beyond places he can see, her arms crossed, thoughtful. To her, the world outside of this room isn’t standing still, but it isn’t moving forward, either.

He tilts his head, gaze trained on the flickering patterns of lost sunlight fighting through the clouds, and pretends.

By this logic, he wonders, perhaps he can be with her for the rest of his life, if not the other way around.

\--

“I don’t want to read philosophy today,” she informs him in the middle of attempting to decipher a book whose letters are all backwards. Her eyes are squinted and her neck is crooked at a weird angle. 

He glances over at her from a desk full of complicated star charts. “That implies you have another option.” He makes a quick note on a diagram. “We can go over quantum physics again, if you’d like - you can be the first human to crack the code of quantum immortality.”

Clara laughs, her voice made of wind chimes. “I think some of those equations are bit beyond me. There’s a reason I’m not a maths teacher.” She walks over to him, placing her elbows on the desk, leaning her chin on her palm. She points at a portion of his writing. “That’s not even a known mathematical symbol, yet.”

“Yes, I’m quite advanced.”

She’s caught between a giggle and a sigh; she rolls her eyes and goes for a mix of both. “I want to talk.” 

“About my brilliance?” 

“No.” Her tone is mildly exasperated, but fades quickly. “Do you ever wish you were human? Or wonder about what it would be like?”

He pauses his tinkering. “I think it would be - difficult, to know as little as humans do.” He ponders the question. “But then again, the juxtaposition of knowing nothing means everything is astounding; every inch of the fabric of the universe would hold such an air of magnificence.” He turns to face her. “I enjoy discovering and unraveling mysteries and impossibilities that baffle me, because it is so rare that they exist at all. That isn’t a comment on my own intelligence, per say, but my own race.”

She nods, following easily. “Science, to put it simply, is a universal truth and one essentially invented by you. That’s understandable.”

“Exactly.” He could talk to her forever. “So I’m drawn to humans because of the predictable yet unpredictable consequences of their emotions, senses, mental capacity. Not all races have such a determined individuality. Like the Daleks, like the Ice Warriors - so on.”

“I get that.” She runs a hand over his drawings. He’s using a pencil. The graphite rubs off on her fingertips. “Conclusion?”

“I do wonder,” he answers. “There are downsides and upsides. But one downside outweighs all else.”

“Which is?”

“If I were human,” he says, “the likelihood that I would exist at the same time as you is slim - unaccountably, unbearably slim - that it’s a risk I could never imagine taking.” His mouth curls in a way only described as bittersweet. “So all the knowledge and disaster and guilt and incredulity that comes with being a Time Lord is worth it, because in this mess of a universe - out of the infinite possibilities of worlds and reflections and dimensions - I was able to meet you. I was given the opportunity to meet _you_.”

She’s silent for a long time. She comprehends his position, the depth of his statement - the words, again, there are so many words - but a response is daunting, complicated. She mulls it over. Her hand falls to cover his, playing with a ring on his finger.

She says, “I told you.” Her smile is precious and reserved. “Quite the steep learning curve.”

“And you?” He asks. “Would you want to be a Time Lord?”

“If you were human,” she says, “absolutely.”

He grins; regardless of the language, they always seem to end up on exactly the same page.

\--

Her students think he’s her boyfriend; she hears them whispering before class, and in the corridors. It doesn’t bother her, but they somehow bring it up, anyway. He’s sitting in her living room; the TARDIS wound up in her bedroom. He denies having anything to do with the landing patterns.

“Boyfriend.” He rolls the sound around in his mouth like it’s a foreign term. “Strange.”

“It’s the loveparadox all over again,” she supplies helpfully, pouring them both a glass of wine. He can’t remember if he likes it or not. 

“It’s one word,” he says. “I’m over two-thousand.”

“Certainly takes the _boy_ out of it.”

“Time Lord-friend.”

“Doesn’t have a nice ring.” She hands him the glass. “Go on.”

He sniffs it cautiously. “Partners.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure.” She clinks her glass against his in a toast, and takes a sip. 

He follows; his eyebrows raise. “Not bad.” He’s impressed with himself. “I must’ve matured some.”

“That must be it.”

He looks aimlessly around the room. “So this is what people do, is it? Drink wine and - what?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Wreck inebriated havoc somewhere.”

“We can do that,” he says. “How many drinks equals _inebriated_?” 

“I’m lighter than you, but you don’t drink, so--” she breaks off. “Two more glasses?” 

“What if I get handsy?” He asks. “That’s an alcohol-induced side effect, correct?”

She laughs. “I won’t mind,” she says. “Might be fun to see, actually.”

“I like touching you.” Her heart skips rope at the confession, murmured so innocently, delicately. He lowers his eyes as if embarrassed or nervous. “It just seems…”

He hardly struggles for a thought, but she catches up. “Vulnerable. It’s a transparent act. The person you touch knows you’re letting your guard down.” 

“Yes.” He seems surprised at her articulation. “It’s easier to be hurt that way, isn’t it?”

“It is.” She doesn’t disagree. “But it’s so much easier to experience happiness that way, too. And love.”

“Ah, love.” He sighs the sentence. “We always seem to come back to that.”

“It’s philosophy,” she says. “If you and I _love_ anything, it’s that.”

He drains the rest of his glass in a smooth motion and pours himself more, also reaching over to tap hers off. 

“Clara,” he says, dropping all pretense, “I think we’ve _philosophized_ enough by now on the subject that we both know that isn’t true.”

She smiles again, exhaling. Yes, she knows; maybe they can finally let it be.

\--

(He takes her fingers in his, pulling her off the sofa. Every step is like a waltz. 

Paris, he says whimsically, Paris in the 20’s! Oh, Clara, the parties! The art! The decadence - the grandeur - there is truly nothing like it anywhere else on Earth!

She’s giggling. He stops, turning to her, and he cups her face in both of his hands. 

If I could live anywhere in the universe, he says, If I could live anywhere with you, at any time, it would be there.

Well, she says breathlessly, you’re making a pretty good case.)

\--

“The oddest thing happened,” Clara begins upon entering the TARDIS a week later. “There are a few _mysterious paintings_ that look quite a lot like the two of us now hanging in the Dorcet.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “How about that.”

“Doesn’t seem to have changed history _too_ much,” she scolds, “so I’m assuming we got lucky.”

“We had quite a bit to drink,” he points out, unaffected. “Look, we’re famous. People will be analysing us for centuries.”

His lead-in is nothing special, and he’s as dry and sarcastic as ever; in years to come, she’ll maintain that she doesn’t know what makes her say it - _it was written in the stars,_ she’ll tell him ominously, laughing - only that she was at a loss for words. And _that_ spoke more volumes than anything she could’ve strung together, anyway.

She looks at him, and her thoughts don’t connect into letters, or syllables; nothing hovers on her tongue, or cuts at the back of her throat; she’s left with just images, feelings, moments. 

She looks at him and she says, “I _love_ you.”

He stops entirely, turning to face her, and his expression is undeterminable; she deciphers shock, and nervousness, and appreciation, and--

“What brought this on?” He asks. “I thought we had philosophy.”

“Oh, fuck philosophy,” she says. “Let’s try something new. We’ve just made history, after all.”

His mouth is soft as he steps towards her. “Clara Oswald,” he says, and then, quite plainly: “I love _you_.”

They observe each other for the briefest of seconds, before she shakes her head, sighing, lips tilting up. There’s a playful glint in his eye. 

“Honestly,” she says, smiling, “I think we had it right the first time.”

\--

(He kisses her, then, stalled in a swirling galaxy, her arms around his waist and his hearts splitting themselves wide open.

The universe still rotates, shifting around them; the stars burn, the planets align, energy reconstructs; time continues as it always has, and as it always will.

Life goes on.)


End file.
